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Monday, November 5, 2012

What's Going On with FamilySearch Family Tree Today?

With reference to logging in the FamilySearch Family Tree, in a past post, I related my experience with a person who had an LDS Account and had never, to his memory, logged into FamilySearch Family Tree. When he went to FamilySearch.org and logged in, the menu item for Family Tree appeared automatically and he was able to get into the program.

Now I have a comment as follows:

It appears as if access to this new site/application is by invitation only. When I log into the FamilySearch I don't see anything different. There is no FamilyTree link showing on either the log-in screen or the home screen of FamilySearch. When I go to new.familysearch.org I do see a different home page with an invitation to try FamilyTree proudly advertised in the title banner. There is an available link inviting me to try FamilyTree. When I click on this it takes me to my FamilySearch log-in screen. When I put in my credentials it doesn't do anything but stays at this log-in screen. The screen does make a fast flash which makes me feel that it is merely looping back to the log-in screen.There is a help link titled "Having Trouble Signing In?" on the new.FamilySearch.org site. When I click on this I get a pdf explaining that the new FamilySearch will be available to a few invited people on February 2011. Then it will be available to the public at some future date. I believe this pdf may be referring to the updated FamilySearch site but not to the upcoming FamilyTree add on.

You stated you wanted to find someone who was registered with FamilySearch but not invited to FamilyTree so you could find out what happens upon trying to access the site. Well, not real exciting from this vantage point, but I am looking forward to FamilyTree becoming available to all of us soon.

There are several possible solutions to this issue. First, is the fact that you may have been logging into New.FamilySearch.org for sometime and not renewed your log in and pass word when those became applicable to all of the LDS online programs. In this case, I suggest re-registering.

If you have been using the same password to access LDS.org or Mormon.org, then you may have hit the password issue with FamilySearch.org. Frequently, lately, we have had difficulty logging in and staying logged in. Usually, I just try again after a while and it works just fine. If I am kicked off while working, I just log in again. They know about and are working on this problem.

If none of these apply, then start with the help menus and request help. The comment above does not give a time frame for when this occurred and it may have been an attempt made during the change over. I did my experiment on 4 November 2012. You may just need to try again. But before you do, go to LDS.org and try and log in and see if you have the same problem.

As a last resort, go to the FamilySearch.org Help menu (upper right-hand corner of the screen) and find the document called "Gaining Access to FamilySearch Family Tree" and follow the instructions.

4 comments:

I attended the Orlando FL Stake's Family History Conference on Saturday. There were at least 6 speakers there from FamilySearch. Jim Greene spoke 4 times on Saturday, discussing FamilyTree in several of the classes. I took notes, but clearly remember him saying that FT went live Thursday night. He also said that the way to sign in to FT NOW is to go to new.familysearch.org and use the box on that screen. One interesting thing he said is that right now no one will be able to get into FT who hadn't previously signed up for NFS. This is only temporary and is because of a couple of things they are trying to get up and running in FT, including the "Sign in to help someone else" feature. He also said that in 2013 (I think he meant early in the year) that NFS would be transferred to FT. If you want to contact him, he gave his email address - GreeneJR@familysearch.org I enjoy your blog!Pat Payne

Well, I just logged into FamilySearch.org. I've never had an invite, didn't use new.familysearch.org, am not an LDS member. I have done indexing for FamilySearch. The Family Tree link was there and clicking on it gave me the big welcome panel.

I already have online trees on 2 other sites and will wait a while before adding any of my data to FamilySearch.

It will be interesting to see how this shakes out and how it compares with WikiTree (haven't yet got into this one).

It appears FSFT was going up and down repeatedly over the weekend. I have been using it for some time and had the same problem described above on Saturday and Sunday. You would get stuck in a loop that just kept taking you back to the log in screen. If you waited a while then came back you could get in, but then it would go down and you would just get the loop again. It seems OK today.